Tradfri bulbs and remote with zigbee

Hi,

I am trying to use Zigbee (Telegesis) to control Tradfri bulb. When I reset a bulb, I can pair it and control it from openhab. As soon as I pair the bulb with a tradfri remote control, it is not connected anymore. Is there a way to somehow pair it and still use the remote? Ideally without needing the ikea gateway?

Cheers,
Andres

A Zigbee device can only be a member of one Zigbee network at a time. When you connect it to the remote that means you remove it from OH.

To make this work you need to add the remote to OH and set up Rules to process the remote button presses and turn on the light. This is how you want it to work anyway so that you can control anything connected to OH with the remote, not just Tradfri devices.

1 Like

Thanks for the quick response! The reason I am trying to have this is because I dont want the whole house without light if the server breaks down, but still be able to control lights from a server in normal operation. I did read something about devices being on the same network in “zigbee groups” but don’t understand that concept yet. If there is any documentation about that I would be interested.

Hi Andres,

I just got it working as you described. It’s quite a fiddle, but this is how I did it:

  1. pair the bulb with OH/Telegesis (5/6 times on/off), test if you can control the bulb via OH
  2. pair the remote/dimmer with OH as well (although you can only view the battery state in OH and the thing is useless in OH), this seems to be the critical step
  3. hold the remote or dimmer close to the bulb and press and hold the connect button very close to the bulb
  4. wait 10 seconds until the bulb stops flickering
  5. wait a minute and try to control the bulb via OH and via remote/dimmer

repeat step 3 to 5 for every bulb you would like to pair with the remote/dimmer.

it took me almost an hour for 10 bulbs, sometimes needed to repeat steps 3 to 5 many times, but it works.

you can reset the remote/dimmer by pressing the connect button 4 or 5 times quickly. wait a bit for it to complete.

BTW: the Ikea control outlets work like a charm with the telegesis as well.

3 Likes

Hi Remon,

This sounds very cool! I will give it a try. Does it work with
multiple different remote/dimmer groups?

Hi Andres,

Yes it does.

RĂ©mon

Hi RĂ©mon,

Cool, it does work. What currently does somehow not seem to work is getting the feedback of the state. If I switch on/off the bulb via remote, openhab somehow does not get any events, so I don’t know if they are on or off. But I can control them through the switch and through openhab, very cool.

Andres,

I just tried with the dimmer and if I Control the bulbs with this one it does send updates to OH here. Instantly more or less.

RĂ©mon

Really strange. I don’t have the dimmer, but dimming via the remote control does not give me any feedback to OH. Are you also on 2.4.0.M6 with a Telegesis extr3?

Ill check tonight or tomorrow.

RĂ©mon

Actually I got it to work now, somehow the pairing did not work the first time, still not sure why.

many thanks for this small manual.
I was able to connect both a motion sensor as well as a remote control with different bulbs successfully.